No arcs:-(

This process with the arcs is really slowing me down. People keep saying they'll put arcs in my box but they don't and I hate asking over and over it's not like I've never lost or mislaid one and I read them within a week. Sorry I'm grumpy because I've got something - not a full-blown cold. This thing is in my head and my throat but apart from coughing fits and a stuffed up head I can function normally so forget sympathy!

OK enough of that. I've borrowed a copy of Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber. Good so far, I'll review it fully when I've finished it. Also I made an impulse buy yesterday The Web of Life by Capra. Read the back of it while I was shelving yesterday and he's just published one about the science of Leonardo da Vinci which sounds fascinating.

Loaf of words and Labyrinth

Someone once told me that writing is like making bread. I never quite understood the analogy until now. When I beat down 20 pages to 10, left it for a while and when I went back to work on it again the ideas in my 10 expanded to 20 and then 40 pages. Now I'm looking at 80 pages. Dare I tighten those 80 down to 40 and see what happens?

Also this week finished Labyrinth. Kind of glad I read the arc of Sepulchre first, although I didn't hate Labyrinth her 2nd novel is much better, tighter, and I connected with her main character immediately. It took me a while to warm up to Alice.

Spent most of my time today editing I'm due to submit my hard copy to the group tomorrow.

Breaking Dawn

Stephenie Meyer's fourth - and final book in the series comes out in August. We're taking pre-orders - no reservations this time. I love midnight launches. Stephenie will not be there. I mean we tried to get JK for HP7......

In the meantime here's a countdown for all you Edward/Jacob/Bella fans.

Spellman Files in paperback

One of my favourite books of last year is now out in paper. The Spellman Files is about this family of dysfunctional private eyes, told through the eyes of eldest daughter Izzy. Izzy, reformed bad girl, still lives at home is obsessed with the 60's TV show Get Smart and collects exes like some people collect stamps. When parental prying goes way over the line Izzy threatens to leave the Spellman family business for good. To stop her Mum gives her an unsolvable cold case. Will Izzy solve it? Read the book and find out.

Word counts - we've been talking about this for a while but Eva finally flat out said that she's going to e-mail us her word count every day just so that she knows that she has to report it. I think it's a great idea so at the end of each post I'm going to put my word count for the day even if - as today - it's zero. Hey it was 206 yesterday! Today I have a ton of housework to do, ugh! Also while we're talking about writing I had a complete blep on Friday and realized that this simple past lark isn't working. So Friday I re-edited it all back to the present tense. God it reads so much better like that:-)

More writing than reading

Finished arc of the 'The Killer's Wife' it didn't really grab me. I'm halfway through Eat, Pray, Love and so far her sense of humour is carrying me through the preachy bits. Plus the fact that I've just started doing the type of yoga she's talking about and although it's doing something I'm not quite sure what:-) Crystal Skull by Manda Scott was good, I seem to be on a history kick at the moment or maybe that should be a past/present kick. The ending was OK but I felt she built up one particular character to be the bad guy and then switched teams on us at the end. I liked her characters though and the emotion between Stella and Kit was nicely played as was Owen and Fernandez's friendship.

I'm written a few stories this week - all short - none of them short enough to fit on the back of a postcard. This was the exercise we didn't do at the last meeting. Going to try Lyns' suggestion of creating a brochure for the LWPP and when we go back to Europe in March I'm taking my camera to get as many pics of the village as possible.